Thursday, February 27, 2014

The former Jesuit Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio has had a complicated relationship with liberation theology, clashing with left-leaning members of his Jesuit order who took up its politicized call to confront Argentina’s violent military dictatorship in the 1970s.

Nevertheless, Francis fully embraces its call for the church to have a “preferential option for the poor.”

The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, has been on a rehabilitation campaign of sorts, saying that with the first Latin American pope, liberation theology can no longer “remain in the shadows to which it has been relegated for some years, at least in Europe.”

Many people don’t know that Pope Francis planned to write his thesis
on Romano Guardini, the distinguished theologian and liturgist who had a
profound influence on Joseph Ratzinger. Ratzinger even named one of
his most important books with the same title as that of one of Guardini’s, namely, The Spirit of the Liturgy. (We need to read and apply what Ratzinger wrote now more than ever, by the way.) [Magister
corrected his own entry which now reads: "It was precisely on Guardini
that the Jesuit Bergoglio was planning to write the thesis for his
doctorate in theology, during an academic sojourn in Germany in 1986 at
the philosophical-theological faculty of Sankt Georgen in Frankfurt: a
plan that was later abandoned."] Pope Benedict, the day he stepped-down, quoted Guardini twice in his final speech as Pope.

This note of collegiality, which eminently characterizes and distinguishes the process
of origin of the present "sacrament of salvation" (cf. Dogmatic
Constitution on the Church, <Lumen gentium>, nos. 1, 9, 48), is presented as the
People of God and its hierarchical constitution appears based on the College of Bishops
united with its Head. For this reason, therefore, the bishops and the episcopates were invited to collaborate
in the preparation of the new Code, so that by means of such a long process, by a method
as far as possible collegial, there should gradually mature the juridical formulas which
would later serve for the use of the entire Church. In all these phases of the work there
also took part experts, namely, specialists in theology, history, and especially in canon
law, who were chosen from all over the world. To one and all of them I wish to express today my sentiments of deep gratitude. In the first place there come before my eyes the figures of the deceased Cardinals who
presided over the preparatory commission: Cardinal Pietro Ciriaci who began the work, and
Cardinal Pericle Felici who, for many years, guided the course of the work almost to its
end.

Code, corresponds perfectly with the teaching and the character
of the Second Vatican Council. Therefore the Code, not only because of its content but
also because of its very origin, manifests the spirit of this Council, in the documents of
which the Church, the universal

I think then of the secretaries of the same commission: Very Rev. Mons. Giacomo
Violardo, later Cardinal, and Father Raimondo Bigador, S.J., both of whom in carrying out
this task poured out the treasures of their doctrine and wisdom.

Together with them I recall the Cardinals, the archbishops, the bishops and all those
who were members of that commission, as well as the consultors of the individual study
groups engaged during these years in such a difficult work, and whom God in the meantime
has called to their eternal reward. I pray to God for all of them. I am pleased to remember also the living, beginning with the present Pro-President of
the commission, the revered brother, Most Rev. Rosalio Castillo Lara, who for a very long
time has done excellent work in a task of such great responsibility, to pass then to our
beloved son, Mons. Willy Onclin, whose devotion and diligence have greatly contributed to
the happy outcome of the work, and finally to all the others in the commission itself,
whether as Cardinal members or as officials, consultors and collaborators in the various
study groups, or in other offices, who have given their appreciated contribution to the
drafting and the completion of such a weighty and complex work.

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

The cardinal in the Dominican Republic (DR) has clashed with the
Jesuits in his country, hitting out at a Cardinal Nicolás López Rodríguez, Archbishop of Santo Domingo, has
said that a court ruling last year preventing the descendants of
Haitians from continuing to claim citizenship must be respected. Thousands of Haitians cross the border illegally into DR, Haiti’s wealthy neighbour, in search of work.

prominent Jesuit priest who
defended the right of Haitians born in the Dominican Republic to claim
Dominican nationality.

The cardinal called on the Jesuits to stop supporting Fr Mario Serrano, the executive secretary of the DR bishops' commission on Haitian issues. Until 2012 Fr Serrano was director of the Bonó Centre, which works with impoverished Haitians and is at the forefront of support for the right to citizenship of those born in DR.

Cardinal Lopez was videoed at a Mass in January during which he appeared to lose his temper, calling Fr Serrano a left-wing “reprobate” who must be brought under control. "I must be respected in this country but this person seems to think he’s the Pope," he shouted. Addressing the Jesuit superior in DR, he added: “Tell him to shut up and that’s it.”

Have either John or Paul prophesied the Advent of a definite individual
Antichrist at the end of time? No.“End of the World,” and the events surrounding it,
must necessarily occur as historical events, it seems equally necessary
that they must express themselves in something concrete, either a man,
or a group, or a political or systematic unit of some sort; but the Old
Testament, Saint Paul, and Saint John use their image of a definite one
person precisely when their gaze is fixed rather on their own time,
which is, in a sense, the least “real,” most transitory, plane of all
those that they contemplate. Babylon, Tyre, Antiochus, Rome – and all
the persecutors of all history for ever, are but the crude material
examples of a much deeper and abiding truth, just as the Two Witnesses
stand as symbol of that residue of the Faithful who never cease their
promulgation of God’s truth even in the worst of persecution, and,
“though they be dead, yet shall they live,” as Our Lord promised; and
just as we ought not to try to tie them down to definite personalities,
like Moses and Elias, Elias and Enoch, Peter and Paul, so neither should
we seek to assign a definite individual as the captain of the enemy
host that forever bears hard upon them.
There is certainly nothing to prevent
our surmising that the enemies of God may be led or represented by an
individual, at the end of human history just as at any other time;
indeed, since the

“His works will survive the centuries like those of Augustine and St.
Thomas Aquinas,” Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna, another
theology student of Ratzinger’s, said last year. To advance that
cause, Benedict’s writings are currently being compiled and edited into a
multivolume set, and some speculate that one day there may be more to
add. “I can’t imagine him being alive and not writing,” said the Rev. Joseph Fessio, S.J. of Ignatius Press, the primary English language publisher
of Benedict’s works. Fessio, also a member of the “Ratzinger Schulerkreis,” or school circle, of former theology students that meets
every year to discuss and promote Benedict’s ideas, said he was
convinced Benedict would never publish anything while he is alive out of
respect for Francis and the papal office. “But I suspect that when he
dies there will be some posthumous works,” he said.Link (here)

On February 25, Georgetown University will host former Secretary of
State and likely 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton for
the presentation of the annual Hillary Rodham Clinton Awards for
Advancing Women in Peace and Security, according to the
University’s website.

The award was created by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and
Security. At Georgetown’s launch of the U.S. National Action Plan on
Women, Peace and Security (GIWPS) in2011, Clinton was present to
announce the creation of the Institute. Clinton still acts as Honorary
Founding Chair.

Clinton once reportedly called a ban on partial birth abortion an
“erosion of our constitutional rights” and is thought to be considering a
run for the presidency of the United States in 2016.

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Loyola University Chicago changed its
guidelines for wedding ceremonies on campus, adopting an official policy
ahead of Illinois' equal-marriage law on June 1. The new policy,
enacted last December, only allows Catholic weddings in the university's
Madonna della Strada Chapel. All other civil or religious weddings,
including same-sex unions, are banned from campus facilities.

The decision also comes after a Loyola student launched a Change.org
petition last September, urging university administrators to allow
same-sex ceremonies on campus. Christine Irvine, a Loyola junior
studying visual communication, started the petition after officials
denied her request to use university facilities for her upcoming
wedding.

Irvine said there were no problems until officials learned she
would marry a woman. To date, the petition has more than 2,900
signatures. In her first interview about Loyola's new policy, Irvine told Windy City
Times that the decision doesn't seem bad to anyone who may not know how
it came about. She believes the university made the decision to
specifically forbid same-sex ceremonies on campus. "It's really disheartening," Irvine said. "It's a sign of the
non-acceptance and non-tolerance of the LGBT students on campus ... a
sign of disrespect of our love compared to our peers." Before Loyola enacted its official policy last December, the
university's standard practice welcomed ceremonies "legally recognized"
in Illinois. But despite legal recognition of same-sex civil unions in
Illinois, those ceremonies were still forbidden at Loyola venues.

The diocese has agreed to pay her $40,000. She alleged that the Revs. Frank Duffy, John Morse and James Poole abused her when she was between the ages of 8 and 12 and a student at St. Joseph/Marquette Catholic School. Duerre said that Morse and Duffy abused her at the school and in the church rectory and that Poole abused her at the St. Peter the Apostle retreat house in Cowiche. She filed the suit in Yakima County Superior Court last March. Now 45, Duerre lives in King County and asked that her name be made public in her suit against the diocese. Reached by telephone Wednesday, Duerre said she decided not to go to trial because “the point wasn’t money; it was to bring the issue to the public. I feel like I got justice, and I got the word out and hopefully that will prevent something like this from going on in the future.” Now deceased, Duffy served at St. Joseph Catholic Church from 1971 to 1979 and in other parishes in the diocese until 1989. Morse worked at St. Joseph’s from 1963 to 1966, 1973 to 1979 and again in 1994. Poole was never assigned here, but may have been a visiting priest.

Duffy was the subject of a lawsuit brought by a plaintiff identified as M.P. in Superior Court in 2010. The plaintiff claimed she was molested in 1977 while a student at St. Joseph/Marquette. The case was settled in 2012 for $205,000.

Morse had not been named previously in a lawsuit against the diocese, but he was part of a $166 million settlement in 2011 the Jesuit Oregon Province agreed to pay to more than 100 victims who said they were abused in schools in the Pacific Northwest decades ago by Jesuits. Morse has denied those allegations. Newsweek magazine reported in 2008 that Poole had been accused of sexual abuse in Alaska. Both Morse and Poole live in a retirement facility in Spokane.

Monday, February 17, 2014

There was a remarkable piece titled “What We Wrought” recently in America, a Jesuit publication, by a Catholic pacifist long active against the U.S. led overthrow of Saddam Hussein. It is remarkable primarily because even as it bewails how the U.S. “destroyed” Iraq, it omits all mention of Saddam and his own central role in Iraq’s destruction.

The Catholic anti-war activist recalls her own travel 12 years ago to Iraq under the unnamed dictator in solidarity against international sanctions and against the impending U.S. led invasion. She was active with “Voices in the Wilderness,” a now disbanded group militantly against Iraq war and sanctions, as well as U.S. nuclear weapons and Israeli policies.

“You destroyed our country,” the Catholic activist quotes one Iraqi student recently telling her. Another tells her, “You destroyed our ancient civilization. You took our childhood. You took our dreams. What can you do? You drop bombs, commit war crimes and then send research teams to investigate what is in the bombs. What can you do? We will not forget. It is not written in our hearts, it is carved in our hearts.” Iraq’s recent resurgence in sectarian violence is recounted in the America piece at length as evidence of America’s crimes against Iraq, even several years after U.S. military withdrawal. For many there will never be any statute of limitations on American culpability for Iraq’s travails.But this anti-American narrative omits almost all history prior to the Persian Gulf War, which the America piece briefly cites without explaining what precipitated it, which of course would distract from the article’s polemical goal. What prompted such focused American attention on Iraq across two decades is never detailed.

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Gonzaga University celebrates the value of diversity. When it comes to one of GU’s most important lecture“the Flannery Lecture is intended to further excellence in theological study and teaching at GU. The lecture is delivered each year by an outstanding Catholic theologian and is prepared and presented to benefit as wide an audience as possible.” This important lecture series might well reach the hoped-for wider audience if the invited speakers represented something other than what one professor I spoke with called “a celebration of radical ‘Catholicism.’ ” As the years have rolled by, the Flannery Lecture series has offered a steady parade of theological liberals who, in many cases, oppose Church teaching on important matters. In fact, judging by the records of past speakers, the Flannery Lectures over the last 10 years have been a decidedly one-sided affair.

series, however, viewpoint diversity has been lacking for at least a decade, and orthodoxy has been hard to find. According to a GU news release,

As the GU professor mentioned above put it when asked about the Flannery Lectures, “It is something that I have tended to avoid like the plague. I have gone to a couple of them, but for the most part all they are is a celebration of radical ‘Catholicism.’ ”

This week, in an article published at 1887Trust.org, background on each of the Flannery Lecturers since 2003 is provided and sourced. One finds lecturers who have supported pro-abortion political candidates, and others who are associated with groups that support same-sex marriage. The list includes a professor suspended from teaching theology because of dissent from Church teaching, and a lecturer whose work has drawn scrutiny from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops for what they called “statements that, unless properly clarified, are not in accord with Catholic teaching.” One past Flannery Lecture presenter, according to First Things Editor R.R. Reno, “presumes that the Church’s current teaching on sexual morality is unworkable, and in some cases unjust.” The list of past lecturers includes a professor refused a platform by an Illinois bishop because the professor “called into question the authentic teachings of the magisterium of the Catholic Church.”

Saturday, February 15, 2014

The event was created in 2010 after a high school student was not
allowed to attend a prom with a same-sex date. The Santa Clara Community
Action Program website describes it as “the hottest, freshest, most inclusive party of the year!” “This year's theme is weddings! Say I do to Marriage Equality,” the
group states. “Put on your fancy pants, your dancing shoes, ask that
special someone to be your date, and maybe you'll be the one to catch
the bouquet! ” The event is exclusively for students of the Jesuit University. Santa Clara’s Activities Programming Board (APB) advertised a “speed dating” event on Tuesday night on its Facebook site by urging students to use the event to “find yourself a date for Rainbow Prom or for Valentine's Day!”

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) was once known as the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition. Later it became the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office. Even after the Second Vatican Council, when it got its current name and lost the adjective "supreme," it was still the top dog in the Roman Curia.

This is the congregation that went after so-called Modernists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It imposed biblical fundamentalism on the church until Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943) by Pope Pius XII freed Scripture scholars to use modern literary and scientific tools to study the Bible. It also silenced American Jesuit theologian John Courtney Murray when he wrote about issues of church and state, and it took on famous French theologians before Vatican II.

After Vatican II, CDF went after Catholic ethicists who questioned the church's ban on artificial birth control. Neither liberation theologians in Latin America nor Asian theologians working on interreligious issues were exempt from investigation. Even bishops were subject to reprimand. Most recently, it has been going after the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in the United States.

The congregation's word was also supreme in the Roman Curia. According to Pastor Bonus (1988), the apostolic constitution governing the Curia, "Documents being published by other dicasteries [offices] of the Roman Curia, insofar as they touch on the doctrine of faith or morals, are to be subjected to its prior judgment" (article 54).

Friday, February 14, 2014

Pope Francis spoke about their mutual acquaintance – including a man working to fight slave labor and child prostitution in their native Argentina - and his encounters with the Swedish people. The Pope remembered his friendship with a Lutheran minister , Anders Gutt - “a big man” - with whom he shared the professorship of spiritual theology in Buenos Aires. "We were a Jesuit priest and a Lutheran,” Pope Francis said. “We understood each other very well." Pastor Gutt is now deceased.

Jesuit Father Joseph S. Rooney died Feb. 3, 2014 at Murray-Weigel Hall, Bronx, N.Y. He was 79. Joseph S. Rooney was born July 26, 1934 in Jackson Heights, Queens, N.Y. to Eugene and Anna (Hand) Rooney. After graduation from Xavier High School and Mt. Saint Michael High School in 1952, he attended St. Francis College in New York City for one year. He then followed his two older brothers, Eugene and Francis, into the Jesuits, entering the novitiate of St. Andrew-on-Hudson, Poughkeepsie, N.Y., on Aug. 14, 1953. Following his novitiate and collegiate studies there, he was assigned to the study of philosophy at Loyola Seminary, Shrub Oak, N.Y.

He taught physics and general science at Xavier High School from 1960-63, then studied theology in preparation for the priesthood at Woodstock College, Woodstock, Md. He was ordained a priest at the Fordham University Chapel on June 6, 1966. His last year of spiritual formation took him to St. Buenos College, Wales. He then began a 30-year career in the high school classroom, teaching physics at Fordham Prep, interrupted only by one year on sabbatical at Fordham University.

While teaching at Fordham Prep, during his summer vacations from the classroom he regularly traveled west and served in parishes in Utah to allow local priests to enjoy a summer break. After retiring from teaching, he decided to devote full time to pastoral ministry in the Diocese of Salt Lake City. From 1998 to 2004 he was first administrator and then pastor at Saint Pius X Church in Moab and Saint Joseph Parish in Monticello. From 2004 to 2012 he was pastor at San Andres Parish in Payson and Saint Patrick Parish in Eureka. This also enabled him to take up his favorite hobby of landscape photography in southern Utah.

He regularly traveled many miles to celebrate weekend Masses and was noted as a compassionate, generous priest who usually, one parishioner noted, ended his sermons with a question for further prayerful reflection.

Declining health dictated that he move back East and so in 2012 he was assigned to pray for the Church and the Society of Jesus at the Jesuit infirmary at Murray-Weigel Hall, Bronx, where he was reunited with his older brother Francis, also a Jesuit priest in residence there. Fr. Joseph Rooney died Feb. 3, two months after his brother Fr. Francis Rooney. He is survived by his oldest brother, Fr. Eugene Rooney, S.J., who resides at the Colombiere Jesuit Community, Baltimore, Md. The Mass of Christian Burial was at the chapel at Murray-Weigel Hall. Burial was at the Jesuit Cemetery, Auriesville, N.Y.

Thursday, February 13, 2014

On Wednesday, January 29, Father Boroughs informed the campus community in a mass email that a complaint had been filed against Rev. Gregory Lynch, S.J. regarding an allegation of adult sexual misconduct. Lynch is no longer at the College, having been removed “from his public ministry and his assignment at Holy Cross, pending the outcome of this matter,” according to Father Boroughs’ email.

The announcement warned that Lynch’s removal “does not represent a determination of Fr. Lynch’s guilt or innocence.” It also stated that the complaint in question did not occur at Holy Cross nor involve a student from the College.

Lynch was ordained a Jesuit priest in 2003. Prior to joining the Chaplains’ Office at Holy Cross, he worked as a history teacher and swimming coach at Creighton Preparatory in Omaha, Nebraska. While at the College, Lynch served as the Assistant Chaplain and Director of Service and Social Justice Programs. Under this title, Lynch served as faculty advisor to Student Programs for Urban Development, helped with the Spiritual Exercises retreat program, and acted as moderator of Pax Christi, among other duties.

Link (here) to the Holy Cross Crusader the student newspaper of Holy Cross

Congressman John Lewis, who has voted against banning partial birth abortion, spoke at Georgetown University last week about civil rights, according to the university’s website. Lewis was reportedly invited to the Jesuit campus to speak to members of the Georgetown community about his new memoir March: Book One which details his experiences during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom with Martin Luther King Jr.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Some questions of human behavior are best mapped on a bell curve, but the spectrum of faith looks much more like an umbrella leaning against a wall – a slow rising incline with a sharp upwards curve at the top. The people down at the tip of the umbrella are those least interested and informed on questions of faith, while those up in the handle are the most devoutly doctrinal. So in 1930, down at the umbrella’s tip you might find Mafia hit men, prostitutes, thieves, and superstitious peasants. Moving up, you’d see the level of knowledge and interest gradually increase, until it suddenly spiked – and up in the handle you’d find saintly mystics, fearless missionaries, as well as self-righteous bigots and Jew-baiting cranks. In between, you’d find all the ordinary people one might expect in a Church intended to serve and save the great mass of humanity, the people Chaucer pictured as pilgrims to Canterbury.

All these people along the umbrella differed in their levels of commitment, but their creed was the same. Al Capone was, and knew himself to be, a Catholic murderer. He did not proclaim himself a “dissenter” on the “life issue,” and align himself with friendly Jesuits whom he found more “open-minded” about the commandment he chose to break. Capone did not sponsor a group like “Catholics for Free-Fire Zones.”

With the controversy over birth control, the handle came off the umbrella. With the mass rejection of the natural law teaching presented in Humanae Vitae, the only people technically remaining as consciously orthodox Catholics was that 5 percent deeply interested in and committed to orthodoxy. There were saintly, self-sacrificing priests and laymen who suffered for their beliefs – and self-congratulating Pharisees who enjoyed being part of the “saving remnant.” There were working-class people who accepted the discipline of remaining open to life, or the ascetical practice of Natural Family Planning – and there were “white trash” Catholics who used the Church’s teaching as a pretext for going on public assistance.

Monday, February 10, 2014

The titlepage of the Typus mundi says: RR.C.S.I.A. These initials represent 'Rhetoribus Collegij Societatis Iesv Antuerp'1, the Jesuit Order of Antwerp. The book has been composed by senior students of the class of Humanities. Each of them created three or four emblems, including a long Latin poem and short poems in French and Dutch. The names of the students are mentioned after the thirty second and last emblem: Egidius Tellier, Balthasar Gallaeus, Gerardus van Rheyden, Ioannes Waerenborch, Ioannes Moretus, Ioannes Tissu, Nicolaus Coldenhoue, Philippus Helman and Philippus Fruytiers; people of whom we do not know much. At the time Jean Matthiae (1601-1669) was their professor of rhetoric. Such a way of teaching was normal within the Jesuit colleges. The colleges provided a humanist education for a large part of the population. Young people were taught Latin and Greek and rhetorics. In the senior classes they were able to use the classical models and to create persuasive texts. So emblematics had been included into the curriculum for its rhetorical function. Making the emblems themselves, the lecturers learned even better how convincing the rhetoric instrument could be. Emblems in the Typus mundi emphasize the joy the students had in appealing to their wit. The collection they created has less to do with the devotional emblem books the Jesuit Order produced in the same era. In that context images and poetry together supported the exercising of faith, certainly a different aim.

About the Typus mundi

Jan Cnobbaert published the Typus mundi in 1627. The full Latin title means Image of the World, in which Calamities and Perils are emblematically presented along with the opposition in feeling between the Love of God and that of man. These calamities and perils are pointed out in all kinds of objects representing human failures. Swords and crowns for instance, represent the dangers of human power. Furthermore a lot of familiar habits pass by, like pride and vanity. Sometimes the examples are somewhat odd and very humorous: Cupid crushing the world with all its goods with a machine (Erit ex hoc æquior Orbis [31]) or Cupid playing pool using globes as pool balls (in Hâc vincitur, illâc perditur [26]).

The cuts are by Phillip de Mallery (1598-?). Some of the them were already used for the Amoris divini et humani antipathia (1626). But the Typus mundi must have had a larger in influence on the Amoris divini et humani antipathia than vice versa. Some illustations of the Typus mundi can be found in the edition of 1629 of the Antipathia.

A portrait of St. Ignatius Loyola fills the frontispiece, properly speaking the thirty third emblem. Loyola is standing on top of the world, looking into heaven. He despises what is below and respects what is above. Only the important places on earth are marked - the Jesuit seminaries or colleges.

Without any doubt the four editions of the Typus mundi (1627, 1630, 1652 and 1697) proof that it has been a popular book. In addition a part of the emblems has been copied in the first and second book of Francis Quarles's Emblemes (1635). More important is the influence on the Poirters, Ydelheit des weerelts, which exploited the success of its ancestor.

Sunday, February 9, 2014

The priest presiding over Philip Seymour Hoffman's funeral has admitted that he learnt about humility from him. Fr. James Martin S.J., who had advised the late actor on his role as Father Flynn in the movie Doubt, said that he was "a lovely person, very down-to-earth",People Magazine reported. The priest had first met the deceased star when he had been called to consult on the Labyrinth Theater Company's production of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot which was directed by Hoffman in 2003. They had spent time together at New York City's Saint Ignatius Church
where he taught him how a priest celebrates Mass, and his funeral Mass
was held at the same church.

Philip
Seymour Hoffman's private funeral was held in Manhattan on Friday at
the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola. The coffin holding Hoffman's body was
brought out of the Church by pallbearers and put it a hearse, and
family and guests began to stream out Friday afternoon.
The church, on the Upper East Side, has also hosted funerals for Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Lena Horne and Aaliyah.
Hoffman was baptized and raised Catholic, but did not go to church
regularly as an adult. Rev. James Martin, who is an assisting priest at
St. Ignatius Loyola, celebrated the funeral mass, and spoke of the "hope
of the resurrection."
According to Martin, Hoffman called himself a Christian believer, was an admirer of Jesus and someone who prayed. Martin told The Huffington Post, "He was a lovely soul and it was a grace to know him."
- See more at:
http://www.gospelherald.com/articles/50348/20140207/mimi-odonnell-make-plans-philip-seymour-hoffmans-funeral-family-photos.htm#sthash.rQwG2kxn.dpuf

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Philip Seymour Hoffman's funeral will be held at a Catholic Church in
Manhattan later this week in what organizers say will be a private
ceremony. The funeral will be held at St. Ignatius Church on Manhattan's Upper East Side, the same church where the funerals of Jacqueline Kennedy
Onassis and the singer Aaliyah took place.

Phil’s strength as a director of “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot,” which debuted at the Public Theater in 2005, was partially the result of his interest in, and familiarity with, the raw material of play. From the beginning, he encouraged the cast to ask questions about the Gospels and the story of Jesus and Judas. Some of this comfort had to do with his religious background. As a boy growing up in a town outside of Rochester, New York, Phil attended Sunday classes in preparation for confirmation in the Catholic Church, though his parents were not especially religious.

“My parents were pretty liberal people, who didn’t talk about God much in the house,” he said. Early on, religion was uninviting to him. “Those Masses really turned me off,” he said. “Lots of rote repetition, pretty boring and sometimes really brutal.”

His perspective changed when one of his two sisters became active in a Christian evangelical movement, to which she still belongs today. She encouraged her brother to accompany her to meetings with her friends, and Phil went along happily. “There was something that was so heartfelt and emotional,” he said. “Nothing about it felt crazy at all. And my sister was certainly the sanest person you could ever meet. It all felt very real, very guttural, even rebellious.”

“There are basically three kinds of inaccurate comments,” Reese said.
“There are the pranksters, and there are people who simply make mistakes
because they don’t understand the issues being discussed. It’s hard to
get worked up over those things.

“But then there are people who
want to spin the pope’s point of view to further a particular agenda,
and that’s very problematic and reprehensible.”

Monday, February 3, 2014

"I would have expected any Catholic to have a better grasp on such a basic topic, let alone a priest who is a member of an order famous for its academic achievements. [I'll get you a popsicle it was a Jesuit.] Makes me very glad that the efficacy of the sacrament is independent of the lunacy of the minister of the sacrament. [Good call.]"

I suspect that that priest is infected, willingly or not, with the deeply harmful errors of the likes of Richard McCormick SJ and Charles Curran. Many priests of a certain age are. Many of certain religious orders are.

First, let’s clarify what the Church teaches.

For a sin to be a mortal sin, it must meet three conditions. It must be:

The third condition is NOT: “desire to completely destroy your relationship with God” – FAIL. That could be a result, but the desire to do so is not a condition.

The third condition (deliberate consent) means that you must not only know that what you are going to do is a sin, you also will to do it. If your will is not engaged, you are not guilty of a mortal sin. If you are being forced, you are under duress, you are impaired in some way, etc., your will is not wholly involved. Mortal sins are not accidents. Mind you, objectively the act itself might be serious enough to be grave matter, but subjectively you are not guilty of a mortal sin if your will isn’t wholly involved. Again, you have to know it is a mortal sin and then you commit that sin anyway, willingly. This means that mortal sins are intended by the sinner. They are a willing rejection of God’s law and love. That does NOT mean that you want thereby “completely to destroy your relationship with God”. Example: “I am going to do X. I know X is wrong. I am going to do it anyway. I want to do X in order completely to destroy my relationship with God.” NO. That is not how 99.99999% of sinners wind up committing mortal sins. As a matter of fact, that would be something so rare as to be unfathomable: that someone sets out to deliberately to do exactly that. There is a difference between knowing that you are harming your relationship with God by sinning and “desiring to completely destroy your relationship with God”.

Sunday, February 2, 2014

While our Holy Father was addressing a distinguished delegation from a highly regarded school founded by the Congregation of the Holy Cross, I am quite confident that he did not exempt from the application of his exhortation the twenty-eight colleges and universities founded by his (and my) religious order, the Society of Jesus. There is no question that these institutions also have a crucial role in

“the uncompromising witness… to the Church’s moral teaching, and the defense of her freedom, precisely in and through her institutions, to uphold that teaching as authoritatively proclaimed by the magisterium of her pastors.”

It may be that there are some within the Jesuit network of higher education institutions who are willing to compromise on such matters, but I know that there are dedicated, faithful people who view such compromise as a betrayal of one’s duty as a disciple of Christ. Pope Francis is clearly one of them, for he recognizes that the unambiguous witness of the Christian cannot compromise on any matter central to the Catholic faith. Time will tell to what extent his words and the sentiments they carry are shared within the world of Jesuit higher education.

Saturday, February 1, 2014

The struggle against corruption and for democracy in Ukraine has
become the Church’s struggle for dignity, “The Church’s role is quite significant in this whole call for a
truer justice through peaceful means,” said Fr. David Nazar in a Jan. 26
e-mail to The Register.Bishops, priests, nuns and lay brothers have been in the middle of
protests in the main square of the Ukrainian capital. Ukrainians have
been protesting against President Viktor Yanukovych since November, when
the president shelved an agreement to deepen ties with the European
Union and made clear his plans to forge tighter ties with Russia. The
anti- government protests have been getting stronger and have recently
been met with violence from Ukraine’s security forces. “The overall and enduring atmosphere on the square is peaceful
non-violence,” reports Nazar. “There is no alcohol allowed. There is
prayer every hour. There is no retaliation for the violence — and now
five killings — by the special forces, except the stones to keep them at
a distance. You really have to be impressed with the nature of this
revolution.”

honesty and peace, says a
Canadian Jesuit in Ukraine.

Nazar is a former provincial superior of the English Canadian Jesuits
who has been in Ukraine over the last decade helping the order there
set up schools and a novitiate program to accommodate a flood of young
men seeking to become priests in the Catholic Church’s largest male
religious order. Nazar has written for a Jesuit publication in Italy
that the protesting Ukrainians have chosen Western, democratic and
Christian ideals.

“The Ukrainian people are European, even if the government is not,”
wrote Nazar. “It is these very values, whose roots are Christian and
which the West takes for granted, that represent the longing of the
people and the healing of the country.” Nazar’s report to The Register from Kiev’s Independence
Square comes just as Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops’ president Paul-André Durocher has urged the prayers of all Canadian Catholics for
peace and justice in Ukraine.

The province declared bankruptcy nearly three years ago, around the
time that the group agreed to pay $166.1 million to about 500 people
abused by Jesuit priests at schools in the Pacific Northwest. It was one
of the Catholic Church’s biggest sex-abuse settlements. At the time, the National Catholic Reporter reported that the
province would pay $48.1 million and that the order’s insurer would pay
the rest.

On Jan. 16, Seattle University paid the Jesuits $2.2 million
for the Arrupe Jesuit Community Building, which is on campus at 924 E.
Cherry St. SU had previously owned the land but not the building, which
serves as a home to Jesuits.

The purchase will help Seattle University, a Jesuit-run institution,
ensure the continued presence of “a vibrant Jesuit community on our
campus and is consistent with the relationship between other Jesuit
universities and their Jesuits,” SU spokeswoman Stacy Howard said in a statement. Pat Walsh, the spokesman for the Oregon province of the Society of
Jesus, said the sale is unrelated to the sexual-abuse settlement. The
bankruptcy was over with several years ago, and the people who had
claims against the province have been paid, he said. Money from the sale of the building will go into the province’s
budget and could be used to fund the care of elderly priests, Walsh
said, adding that Jesuits have been selling residence halls to Jesuit
educational institutions.

About Me

I am not a Jesuit, nor am I a cleric. I spent about 5 years under the spiritual direction of a Jesuit, 3 of those years in a weekly directed retreat in everyday life. The profound impact that the Society and the Excercises had upon my life, resulted in me, trying to deal with that impact in some way by sharing my view of Jesus Christ with others. My intention is to pull together Jesuitical and Catholic subjects that interest me. I was born on the feast day of St. Paul Miki, S.J.. I am the father of three small children and an infant, I am married to a great wife.